Danish police say one man was killed, and three police officers were shot and wounded, in an attack at a Copenhagen cafe Saturday.
The cafe was holding a debate on free speech. The event, titled “Art, blasphemy and freedom of expression,” had been organized by Swedish cartoonist Lars Vilks, who had previously received death threats for his drawings of the Prophet Muhammad.
The French ambassador Francois Zimeray was also among the speakers. Zimeray tweeted “still alive in the room” shortly after the attack.
{mosads}The Associated Press is reporting that Danish police now believe there was one shooter. Earlier reports had indicated that there may have been two gunmen. The AP also reported that Danish security services believe the circumstances of the shooting “indicate that we are talking about a terror attack.”
The person who died is said to be a 40-year-old male. He has not been publicly identified. Vilks was not injured in the attack, according to another event organizer, Helle Merete Brix.
“I saw a masked man running past,” Brix told the AP. “I clearly consider this as an attack on Lars Vilks.”
Roughly 40 shots were fired from outside the cafe, the BBC reports.
It isn’t the first time Vilks has been the apparent focus of violent enemies.
He had a $100,000 bounty placed on his head by an al-Qaeda offshoot in Iraq in 2007, after he published drawings of the Prophet Muhammad as a dog, according to The Guardian. In January 2014, a Pennsylvania woman was sentenced to 10 years in prison for her involvement in a plot to kill him.
In a statement, French President Francois Hollande called the attack “deplorable” and said Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt would have the “full solidarity of France in this trial.”
The attack comes approximately one month after 12 people were killed by gunmen at the Paris offices of the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo.